lOMoARcPSD|3896859

Professional Selling - Summary - Chapter 1

Professional Selling (Clemson University)

StuDocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)
 lOMoARcPSD|3896859

Chapter 1: Selling and Salespeople

Why Learn about Personal Selling?

 Personal Selling: the “phenomenon of human-driven interaction between and
within individuals/organizations in order to bring about economic exchange
within a value-creation context
o Interaction between sellers and buyers that makes selling work today
o Steps aren’t necessarily sequential
o Often involve multiple people and organizations
o Selling is about creating value, which is the total benefit that the seller’s
products and services provide to the buyer
o Customer value proposition: refers to the collection of buyer-specific
benefits
o Goal of selling is to create economic exchange, not merely to promote
the product or service
o Personal value equation= benefits received-(selling price+time and
effort to purchase)
o Everyone Sells

Creating Value: The Role of Salespeople in a Business

 Go-to-market strategies: companies have many options in how they can
approach customers as they add value and the various methods
 Customer lifetime value: factors as the estimated value of the customer over
the lifetime of the relationship
 Sales force-intensive organizations: organizations whose go-to-market
strategies rely heavily on salespeople
 Multichannel strategy: some firms use several strategies at the same time
 Integrated marketing communications: communication programs that
coordinate the use of various vehicles to maximize the total impact of the
programs on customers
 If sales people want to sell effectively, they have to recognize that the buyer has
needs that are met not only by the product but also by the selling process itself.

What do sales people do?

 Client relationship Manager
o Sales jobs involve prospecting for new customers, making sales
presentations, demonstrating products, negotiating price and delivery
terms, writing orders, and increasing sales to existing customers
o Salespeople’s time is spent in meetings, working with support people in
their companies (internal selling), traveling, waiting for a sales
interview, doing paperwork and servicing customers
o Salespeople help customers identify problems, offering information
about potential solutions and providing after-sale service to ensure
long-term satisfaction

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)

 lOMoARcPSD|3896859

o Customer centric: making the customer the center of everything the

salesperson does.
o Salesperson’s job does not end when the customer places an order. They
must make sure customers get the benefits they expect from the product
o Six sigma selling programs: designed to reduce errors introduced by
the selling system to practically zero.
 Account Team Manager
o Many situations call for a team of selling
o Studies show that salespeople who attempt it alone have perform
poorly, have lower job satisfaction, and have higher turnover intensions
o Ex: selling Campbell soup company aluminum cans- coordinated a team
of graphic designers, marketing people and engineers
 Supply Chain Logistics and Channel Members
o Supply chain logistics: the management of the supply chain
 Information Provider To Their Firm
o Salespeople are the eyes and ears of the company in the marketplace
o Salespeople need to be skillful at disseminating the knowledge they have
acquired from customers to other people in their companies
o Must provide information like expenses, calls made, future calls
scheduled, sales forecasts, competitor activities, business conditions, and
unsatisfied customer needs
o Customer relationship management (CRM): must of this
information is now transmitted electronically to the company, its
salespeople and its customers contained in this

Types of Salespeople
 Selling and Distribution Channels
o Salespeople work for different types of firms and call on different types
of customers
o Distribution channel: a set of people and organizations responsible
for the flow of products and services from the producer to the ultimate
user
o Business-to-Business Channels
 Two main channels for producers and providers 1) direct sales to
a business customer and 2) sales through distributors
 In direct channel, salespeople working for the manufactures call
directly on other manufactures
 In the distributor channel the manufactures employs salespeople
to sell to distributors (trade salespeople- sell to firms that resell
the products rather than using them within the firm)
 Many firms use more than one channel of distribution and thus
employs several types of salespeople

o Sales Jobs and the Distribution Channel

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)

 lOMoARcPSD|3896859

Missionary salespeople: work for a manufacturer and

promote the manufactures products to other firms
 Those firms buy the products from distributors or other
manufactures, not directly form the salesperson’s firm
 Normally missionary and local distributors salespeople work
together to build relationships with customers
 Missionary salespeople call on people who influence a buying
decision but do not actually place the order
 Ex: Merck sales reps call on physicians to encourage tem to
prescribe Merck pharmaceutical products
o Consumer Channels
 Manufacturers’ agents: independent businesspeople who are
paid a commission by a manufacturer for all products or services
sold
 Unlike distributors and retailers, agents never own the products-
they simply perform the selling activities and then transmit the
orders to the manufactures

 Describing Sales Jobs

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)

 lOMoARcPSD|3896859

o The stage of the buyer- seller relationship

 Selling to prospects requires different skills that does selling t
existing customers
 Salespeople need to be confident and must be able to deal with
the inevitable rejections that occur when selling to prospects
 Salespeople responsible for exiting customers place more
emphasis on building relationships and servicing customers
o Salesperson’s Role: Taking Orders or Creating New Solutions
 Salespeople work with buyers to develop new systems and
methods and sometimes even new products to increase the
retailer’s sales and profits (selling to headquarters)
 Ex: Frito Lays salespeople go to grocery stores, check stock, and
prepare an order for the store manager to sign
o Importance of the Purchase to the Customer
 Developing partnering relationships
o Location of Salesperson- customer Contact: Field or Inside Sales
 Field Salesperson: spend considerable time in the customer’s
place of business, communicating with the customer face-to-face
 Field selling is typically more demanding because it
entails more intense interactions with customers
 Involved in problem solving with customers
 Inside Salesperson: work at their employer’s location and
typically communicate with customers by telephone or computer
 Respond to customer-initiated requests
o The Nature of the Offering Sold by the Salesperson: Products or
Services
 The type of benefits provided by products and services affects the
nature of the sales job
 Products such as chemical and trucks typically have tangible
benefits
 The benefits of services (insurance) are more intangible:
customers cannot easily measure the riskiness of an investment
 Intangible benefits are harder to sell than tangible benefits
o The Salesperson’s Role in Securing Customer Commitment:
Information of Placing an Order
 Sales jobs differ by the types of commitments sough and the
manner in which they are obtained
 Ex: Du Pont missionary salesperson might encourage a clothing
designer to use Du Pont Teflon fibers but does not undertake the
more difficult task of asking the designer to place an order
 The Sales Job Continuum
o Sales jobs described by the responses in the far right column require
salesperson to go into the field, call on new customers who make
important buying decisions, promote products or services with
intangible benefits and seek purchase commitments

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)

 lOMoARcPSD|3896859

o
 Examples of Sales Jobs (pg. 15-16)

Characteristics of Successful Salespeople

 Self-Motivated
o Self-starters who do not need the fear of an angry supervisor to get
them going in the morning or to keep them working hard all day
o Motivated to learn, and they work at improving their skills by amazing
their performance and using their mistakes as learning opportunities
 Dependability and Trustworthiness
o Salespeople who are genuine and come across as authentic are better-
performing salespeople
 Ethical Sales Behavior
o Honesty and integrity are critical for developing effective relationships
o Over the long run, customers will find out who can be trusted and who
cannot
o Good ethics are good business
 Customer and Product Knowledge
o Effective salespeople need to know how business make purchase
decisions and how individuals evaluate product alternatives
o Need product knowledge- how their products work and how the
products features are related to the benefits customers are seeking
 Analytical Skills and the Ability to use Information Technology
o Salespeople need to know how to analyze data and situations and use
the internet, databases and software to effectively sell in today’s
marketplace
o Selling analytics is an attempt to gain insights into customers by using
sophisticated data mining and analytic techniques
 Communication Skills
o The key to building strong long-term relationships is to be response to a
customer’s needs
o Need to be a good communicator
o Need to learn how to communicate in international markets
 Flexibility and Agility
o Must adapt to each selling situation
o Salesperson must be sensitive to what is happening and agile enough to
make those adaptions during the sales presentation
 Creativity

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)

 lOMoARcPSD|3896859

o Creativity: the trait of having imagination and inventiveness and using

them to come up with new solutions and ideas
o Takes creativity to get an appointment with a prospect and develop
presentation that the buyer will long remember
 Confidence and Optimism
o Salespeople tend to be confidence about themselves, their company and
their products
o Confident people are willing to work hard to achieve their goals
 Emotional Intelligence
o Emotional intelligence (EI): the ability to effectively understand and
regulate one’s own emotions and the read and respond to emotions of
others, and this is an important trait for salespeople
 Knowing one’s owns feelings and emotions as they are
experienced
 Controlling one’s emotions to avoid acting impulsively
 Recognizing customers’ emotions
 Using one’s emotions to interact effectively with customers

Rewards in Selling
 Independence and Responsibility
o Outside, moving around, meeting people and working on various
problems
o Unusual freedom and flexibility- not a 9-5 job, decide how to spend their
time and do not have to report in
o Similar to independent entrepreneurs
 Financial Rewards
o Salespeople tend to earn more money the longer they sell
 Management Opportunities
o Selling jobs provide a firm base for launching a business career
o Many CEOs and chairmen of the board started their careers as
salespeople

The Building Partnerships Model

Downloaded by Aayush Sinha (aayushsinha50@gmail.com)